Flamenco has taken the world by storm, with huge crowds experiencing its power. Ironically, though, if the performance is authentic – and much in the tourist trade is not – the uninitiated may find it baffling; the rhythms are exotic and strange, the intensity of feeling startling. Yet for the Andalusians, flamenco has been familiar for a thousand years: it is the song of the outcasts. Robin Totton writes from his life among them, for he has come as close to flamenco as any outsider can hope to. Readers will follow as he walks us through the poetic song forms, the rhythmic guitar and the flamboyant dance, as well as the vocabulary, names and places of living art of flamenco.